Dignity Never Been Photographed 005

Toluca Lake, 2013

Welcome back to Dignity Never Been Photographed, a series in which I discuss a meaningful photograph I’ve taken

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I took this picture driving west down Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake sometime in 2013.

That’s as much as I remember. I don’t think I was going to Bob’s Big Boy this day, but I can’t be sure, because I’ve eaten at this Bob’s Big Boy many times. The reason I’ve eaten there so many times is because I lived down the street for about two years, from 2011 to 2013. It didn’t serve particularly good food, but it was open all the time. More importantly, it was generally agreeable to all the members of my family, some of whom are picky eaters. It was also just a great vibe.

I haven’t been there in many years, but I believe this last point is almost certainly still true.

I’m drawn to this photo at the moment because of the recent passing of the great David Lynch, who also used to patronize this Bob’s Big Boy. I never saw him there, but it’s entirely possible he and I sat in the same red leather booth a week or a day or hell, an hour apart.

Soon after Lynch’s passing on January 15th, Angelenos flocked to Bob’s en masse and constructed an ad hoc memorial at the foot of the Big Boy: roses, portraits, loosies, coffee mugs, slices of pie, and various other articles of Lynchanalia. It was a beautiful, spontaneous gesture made by a people mourning the loss of one of their last great artists—a gesture made again and again on an individual level, with no goal, coordination, or incentive. That it took place against the backdrop of the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires made it all the more heartening. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, most people, it seems, are still fundamentally decent.

Technically speaking, this isn’t a great photograph. The palm tree in the middle of the frame is messy, and there isn’t enough detail in the bottom half of the image. There’s room for more exposure on the sky, as well—you get a hint of the brilliant Southern California sunset, but it isn’t quite as vivid as it should be. I took this picture with a disposable camera, so I wasn’t able to effect a better outcome by adjusting shutter speed or aperture.

The picture is also grainy and low resolution (the file in my photo library clocks in at ~800 KB). This was another failing on the part of my younger self: I used to use a cheap little negative scanner to digitize my film, which I would then upload to Facebook before deleting the original files and discarding the negatives. This ridiculous workflow means that several years of my photo archive is made up of muddy, minuscule files that bear only a passing resemblance to the originals from which they were made.

But those are all things that this photo isn’t. I’m thankful for what it is: an image of a place I knew and loved, and which one of my favorite artists did too.

And dig that Big Boy silhouetted on the right.